1. Field
This invention involves improvements in packaging for handling and transporting relatively lightweight and flexible products such as extruded plastic or fiberglass molding strips, deck planks, or the like which, when in substantial lengths of, e.g., 8 ft. or more, may tend to droop or bend excessively particularly when stacked on pallets and lifted by fork lift trucks or the like. Such flexing makes it very difficult to stack the products in such a manner as to protect them from damage or to stack them to a height which affords cost efficient storage or transport thereof.
2. Prior Art
Heretofore such products have been packaged in large wood framed structures or crates of, e.g., 2×4 lumber including 3 or 4 long runners on the bottom and offtimes with no product confining sides. Such crates are heavy, expensive, time consuming to assemble by screws, nails or bolts, difficult to load the product items thereinto, difficult to dispose of after use, difficult to take apart where reuse or recycling of the lumber is attempted, and difficult to handle, store or ship in stacked units. Moreover, such crates do not provide structure which can protect specialty items from abrasive or impact damage which can occur during loading or unloading of the items into bundles for shipment, storage or on the job use.
The present packaging invention on the other hand does not have such disadvantages and provides support and damage protection for such products substantially throughout their lengths and allows rapid and unhindered high stacking of the products without fear of damage thereto or dislocation thereof from the stack during lifting, storage and transport.